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Echoes of Eon interview with Grzesiek Wieliczko and Rafał Korecki

Pound for pound Poland has been pumping out
some of the best kraut and space rock the last couple of years. Emerging from the growing scene come
critically acclaimed fan lauded favorites, Echoes of Eon. After winning the eye of the public Echoes of
Eon spent nearly two years honing their skills with live performances and
festival after festival until the time came to record their debut album Immensity. By this point they are a well-oiled machine, a
prog-rock space monster. Bleeding but
not tied to an obvious Hawkwind influence Echoes of Eon are proving to be a
unique musical voice among the growingly chocked Polish scene. With so many great bands out there it’s hard
to keep people’s attention but that doesn’t seem to be a problem with Echoes of
Eon, they certainly interested me enough to talk with them about the history of
the band, recording the new album Immensity
and what the future has in store for them.

What is the band's lineup?

Grzesiek:
Echoes of Eon are Mateusz Narkiewicz on guitar, Rafał Korecki on bass,
Paweł Głębocki on drums and myself Grzesiek Wieliczko playing guitar.

Are any of you in other bands at this point? Have you been in any other bands that
recorded or released anything?

Grzesiek:
Each one of us has gained experience from other bands. Many years ago I recorded an album with an
industrial black-metal band Nepauz Had.
After that I created The Rack Tripp which was entirely my project. Nowadays besides Echoes of Eon I have a solo
project Become the Ocean. It’s in the
very early stages of development though, and because of my lack of time I’ve
had to put it on hold for the moment.

Rafał:
Before Echoes of Eon we were playing with Mateusz and Pawel in a project
called Circle's Closing but it kind of died a natural death. A few years back Mateusz and Pawel also
played in a band called Good City, Mateusz recorded two albums with them but
Pawel’s only on the last one.

Where is the band currently located?
Are you very involved with the music scene there?

Grzesiek:
The matter of location is rather complicated in our case. Three quarters of the band come from Dobre
Miasto which is where our rehearsals take place. I lived in Olsztyn before, about 20 km from
there so there was no problem, but now I live in Gizycko which is 120 km away. Because of that we only rehearse when we’re
preparing for a concert.

Rafał:
We played our first concerts here in Olsztyn and Dobre Miasto we are
very involved with the music scene but we’re very open-minded and eagerly
cooperate with bands from all over Poland.

How would you describe the scene there?

Grzesiek:
In Olsztyn itself the music scene isn’t very big. We had a little problem finding bands that
play similar music in the beginning. We
played concerts with strictly metal or even pop-rock bands, but after few gigs
we got to know other bands that were on the same wavelength like MOAFT from
Morag. We were, and still are, very
eager to play with them. The music scene
itself in my opinion is a little bit narrow and consists mostly of metal
bands. I recommend you check out Cerber
and Messa, and of course MOAFT!

Rafał:
In Dobre Miasto we only really have three very resilient bands: Hyperial, Kohorta and ourselves. It's a small town and we don't have many
musical events going on.

How did you all meet? How long
has Echoes of Eon been around? What led
you to form the band?

Grzesiek:
We met two years ago. The band was originally just me and a drummer,
Krzysiek. We were looking for musicians
who would fit in our post-rock form and after a few personel changes, Rafał and
Mateusz joined the band. Finally due to
the band’s evolution we also changed drummers, Krzysiek was replaced by Pawel
who fits in perfectly and is a very solid foundation at the moment.

Rafał:
The band's form is a post-rock and post-metal hybrid but we don't assume
that we are going to do that all the time, it’s just in all of us and comes out
during composition.

Grzesiek:
The name refers to the music and space that we are trying to create with
it. I don’t think anyone knows the real
meaning at this point, we’ve had a few theories in the past but no one
remembers them at this point haha!

Does Echoes of Eon have any music other than the upcoming album
Immensity available?

Grzesiek: No, not at the moment.

In March you performed at least part of the new album live for Radio
Olsztyn, how did that go? Did you just
debut some new songs or did you perform the album in its entirety? Was it nerve wracking playing new material
live for broadcast?

Grzesiek:
At the Radio Olsztyn show we played Immensity almost in its
entirety. We probably would have played
the whole album but it didn't fit within the time limit. Personally I was a bit stressed with the
monitors (foldback) in my earphones, having an additional cable on me I
couldn't move while playing and what's more we normally play very loudly. Having an earphone monitor (foldback) I
didn't really feel what I was playing. It was however, a very interesting experience
and I think it went really well.

Can you describe your song writing process? Is it a lot of jamming or does someone come
in with a more finished idea and flesh it out with the rest of you?

Grzesiek:
We come up with 90% of the material while jamming. Usually someone starts to play and the rest
of us just join in. We’re trying to
memorize and link the most interesting sections for the most part. The exception is Ganimedes that I composed on
my own. While playing it at rehearsals
everyone added something though, their own parts and ideas, and thanks to that
the song fits in perfectly with the rest of the material.

Rafał:
I would mention two songs as great examples, Delusion I and Delusion II
which we actually composed with Grzesiek in a hotel room while recording
Immensity.

Immensity comes out April 30th.
Who is putting it out? Where can
our readers get a copy?

Grzesiek:
We put Immensity out on our own and we are selling and distributing the
album ourselves. You can buy our album at the online store:
http://echoesofeon.8merch.com/

What does the album title Immensity refer to?

Rafał:
Immensity was actually my idea, I wanted to underline or even direct the
listener to our vision of Echoes of Eon’s music. I only had one word in mind,
immensity. I think it perfectly describes our musical journeys into vast spaces
and the infinite.

Can you talk about the recording of Immensity? Who recorded it? Where was it recorded at? What kind of equipment was used?

Grzesiek:
Immensity was recorded at the Sounds Great Promotion studio in
Gdynia. Our producer was Jan Galbas,
mixing and mastering was done by Kuba Mankowski and Jan Galbas. We established that we wanted the album to
sound like we were playing live so we played on the same equipment that we use
during concerts.

Do you enjoy recording? It seems
like bands either love it or they hate it.

Grzesiek:
It was the first time in professional recording studio for all of us so
we didn't really know what to expect.
Fortunately our producer Dziablas approached us with a lot of patience
and we managed to record the album comfortably in six days. Actually we enjoyed it so much that we’ve
already started to think about the next time, what kind of mistakes we made and
can avoid next time around.

Rafał:
Although it was our first time the session was very good. The mood was great. We didn’t really have any problems during
production and ended up with even more interesting ideas than we had prepared
before entering the studio.

Other than the release of Immensity on April 30th do you have any other
plans or goals for the year you'd like to accomplish?

Grzesiek:
Our main goal is to promote the album and play concerts. We’re not
really thinking about anything else at the moment.

What plans do you have as far as touring goes this year?

Grzesiek:
Upcoming shows include Bring The Astronauts Fest and the Dobremiastock
Festival, both in Dobre Miasto. We’re
also supporting Long Distance Calling in Poznan at the Post Rock Festival. We usually learn about upcoming shows as they
happen as opposed to doing a lot of planning, we will probably organize a small
tour promoting the album shortly though.

It sounds like you have a pretty varied source of music you draw from;
can you talk about some of your major influences?

Grzesiek:
Well I probably won't surprise you by saying that everyone of us listens
to a different type of music. Of course
we all have some bands and types of music we enjoy in common with each other as
well though. I have a few bands that I'm
always listening to and always will be.
Those are King Crimson, Tool, Neurosis, Meshuggah, The Mars Volta,
Russian Circles and The Ocean. Other
bands and inspirations change all the time, if I were to answer this question
next week the answers would be different but at the moment some of them are
Cult of Luna, Puscifer, Red Fang, Karnivool, Bon Iver, Muse, Nine Inch Nails,
Mastodon, Rosetta I Ufomammut. Polish
bands also worth mentioning include Blindead, Obscure Sphinx, Nao, Ampacity and
my latest discovery, Hetane.

Rafał:
We share a lot of those influences in common like Tool, Meshuggah, The
Mars Volta, Russian Circles, The Ocean.
For my part I would mention Tesseract, Gojira , Isis, Opeth, Porcupine
Tree and Cloudkicker, which is actually a solo procject of mine but also very
inspiring.

It's a double-edged sword in and of itself, but digital music has
exposed me to an entirely new cosmos of musical exploration. How do you feel about digital music and
distribution?

Grzesiek:
I think it's a good phenomenon.
The whole music industry should switch their model to publicizing music
mainly in the digital format. CD's and
vinyl should be the privilege of music lovers.
It’s a result of the times we're living in. We consume so many products, including music,
that it’s so much easier to download a mp3 and play it with one click on a
computer than it is to look for a CD, remove it from the package and put it
into a CD player. In my opinion good
music defends itself; people who collect albums will always collect them, the
thing is to get to people who don't buy CDs or vinyl for different reasons, who
are comfortable with downloading mp3s from the internet interested and
involved. Delivering them music in a
digital format for less money seems like a good solution, in fact we’re
planning on offering an online digital version of Immensity soon.

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Psychedelic Folk issue available

Dedicated to British psychedelic folk. New issue of printed version projected from the well-known, leading psych on-line site It’s Psychedelic Baby. After the previous issue covering exclusively the US psychedelic folk scene (IPB 002, 2016), this new issue covers the 1960s and 1970s British folk scene, with exclusive interviews of members from acts such as Fresh Maggots, Comus, Mellow Candle, Dr Strangely Strange, Spirogyra, C.O.B., Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention, Pererin, Courtyard Music Group, Magic Carpet, Sunforest, Oberon, etc. Also includes a few pages of record reviews. Cover by Justin Jackley.